Re: What is your counsel?

Description: Can local culture survive in a global community?

Question: What should we be doing as individuals?

Transcript: I think the one issue which relates in some ways to my comments about cultural sensitivity, is that many of the world’s problems I think would be prevented if we were to just simply put ourselves in another’s shoes, especially when it comes to conflict resolution. I think that there are many times when we can’t see the other person’s point of view. And if we did, I think we wouldn’t find ourselves in the kind of trouble that we are in today. So that would be my one comment that . . . that in fact . . . you know . . . let’s . . . let’s try and put ourselves in the other person’s shoes.

Question: Can a local culture survive in a global community?

Transcript: Yeah. I mean that’s a great question because it’s actually one of the, I think, biggest questions that we all have to come to terms with. When globalization first started to be talked about – and of course it originally began as an economic model – I think that so many people felt like local cultures would disappear. Now it’s true to say there is something of a . . . a kind of global economy; that when we go to different cities around the world, we do find McDonald’s and we do find Starbucks. But I think the flip side of that has been that people also have sort of retained local cultures, or to inflect these kind of global organizations in local ways. So the Starbucks that you might go to in Italy will be different from the Starbucks that you go to in China. And so I think that while that might seem kind of a superficial interpretation of the global/local kind of question, I think on the one hand there are those who . . . who are able to be global citizens, if you like. But I think we also have to be . . . we also have to remind ourselves that this is a minority of the kind of world population. And that for so many other people it’s simply a local situation. It’s a local culture. It’s . . . it’s . . . Globalization hasn’t had an impact on everyone. And so I think that we will never see, as far as I can see, the disappearance of a local culture because that is what I think people really want; that the global culture is what I see as an imperative of something that we . . . or kind of a necessity of what we all have to deal with. But local isn’t _______ working on a local level, really ______ disappear.

Question: Do artists have a responsibility to preserve local culture?

Transcript: I’m not sure. I mean for . . . for most artists, they . . . To be an artist is a very kind of solitary existence. You create . . . most of them create works in . . . by themselves in their studio environment. So I think for them to think that they represent a cultural or a nation, or a work collectively, I think, is a difficult concept for all of them. I think that they create works that might offer very important commentary on certain things; but I don’t know that they would ever feel like they could be involved in the kind of preservation of a local culture. I think that their works might be interpreted in that way, but I don’t know that any of them would ever feel that that was their role within society.

Question: Whose responsibility is it to preserve local culture?

Transcript: Well I think preservation is a . . . is a kind of interesting question, because when . . . oftentimes when one seeks to preserve something, it . . . it might prevent it from evolving or changing. So although there is very good work done – especially in the field of government, NGO agencies, also even foundations – to support the preservation of culture . . . and often that cultural tradition might be in the form of dance, or movement, or something like that perhaps more so than on the visual arts side. But I think we have to be really careful about this idea of preservation, that it doesn’t actually limit the ability to . . . for these kind of traditions to evolve and change in response to a kind of changing environment.

Recorded on: 7/11/07